OUR KING CAME TO BRING JOY
Zechariah 9:9-10
Pastor Jeremy Mattek – April 9, 2017 (Palm Sunday)
In the name of Jesus, our Palm Sunday King, who was received with shouts of joy when he rode on a donkey into the city of Jerusalem. In the spirit of those who welcomed him that day, I would like to invite you to join in those shouts of joy. I am going to describe a situation, and I would like you to give an appropriate shout of joy that you feel that situation deserves. Ready?
Your favorite sports team wins the championship.
You get straight A’s on your report card.
Your parents give you $100 for every A on your report card.
Your favorite baseball team beats the world champions on a wild pitch in the 11th inning.
Your lottery ticket wins.
It’s 72 degrees and sunny every day.
You never see another mosquito ever again.
Every addict beats their addiction.
Every marriage is full of joy.
There is no more cancer in the world.
Those are all situations worthy of shouts of joy, aren’t they? I have one more for you: In the middle of the night, while most of the town is sleeping, heavy rains cause a major mudslide that kills 314 people, including 102 children, with more than 100 still missing. You may know that this actually happened. Last weekend, the little town of Mocoa in southwest Columbia was buried by a mudslide that caused a lot of pain and a lot of destruction. I bet there weren’t too many shouts of joy when that happened.
But it is the exact type of situation in which God told his people to give a shout of joy in our sermon. As we read about Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Matthew quoted from the Old Testament book of Zechariah, a book that was written many hundreds of years before Palm Sunday, in which Zechariah told the people of Jerusalem to “rejoice greatly,” or literally “shout for joy” because their king was going to be coming. But you need to know something about life in Jerusalem at the time Zechariah wrote this. When they looked at the city, it was filled with a lot of pain, and they saw a lot of destruction.
Almost 90 years earlier, the Babylonians had come into Jerusalem with the force of a mudslide coming in the middle of the night. They destroyed the city, killed adults and children, and took those who survived back to Babylon as slaves, where many more died. Eventually, God’s people who were still alive came home to rebuild everything. But after 14 years of cleaning everything up, burying the bodies they found under the collapsed buildings, trying to rebuild their homes and their temple with just a fraction of the tools and help they had when put them up the first time, not only was the work not even close to being finished, they started to believe that it never would be. They were discouraged; believing that things were never going to get better, no matter how hard they tried.
And it was in that setting that God told them to “shout for joy;” which would be like telling you to shout for joy when it’s really obvious that your marriage is broken, or when yet another person you love dies, or when you hurt someone with your sin, or when the cancer keeps spreading. But he didn’t tell them to shout for joy because those types of things happened. He told them to shout for joy because of how our God chooses to respond when they do happen. Palm Sunday is a reminder of the special joy with which Christians are blessed to livebecause of the work of our Palm Sunday king.
9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.
I don’t know that Zechariah is anyone’s favorite book in the bible. But it’s incredibly fascinating. We already mentioned how this book correctly predicted that Jesus would ride into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey hundreds of years before that happened. Zechariah also predicted that Jesus would be betrayed for the exact price of 30 pieces of silver. He also predicted that the skin of Jesus would be pierced. He predicted that he would serve us as a shepherd, a judge, and a king. Zechariah predicted many things about the life of Jesus, all of which ended up happening. And this means something very significant when you consider the meaning of Zechariah’s name. Do you know what the name Zechariah means? It means “The Lord remembers.”
And just as the Lord remembered and knew and did not forget everything that was going to happen in Jerusalem, this book is a reminder that the Lord also remembers you. He knows your struggles. He knows your pain. He knows the moments in life that make it hard to shout for joy and give thanks to him, and he does not want you to forget what kind of king was coming into Jerusalem.
This chapter in the book of Zechariah actually talks about two types of kings – both of whom were sent by God. But the way they ruled was very different. If you look at the eight verses right before our sermon text, it talks about the nations of Tyre, Sidon, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Ekron would all be destroyed by one person. Do you know who that person was? It was Alexander the Great. The book of Zechariah also predicts the conquests of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great never lost a battle. He died young. He died at age 33 (the same age as Jesus when he died) from Malaria. But before he did, he defeated and ruled what today are the countries of Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. And whenever he came into a new town, he would demand that they would either build a statue of Alexander the Great or dedicate a temple to him. And if they didn’t, Alexander the Great would kill them. And that highlights the way he expanded his kingdom – with weapons and with force. That was one king the book of Zechariah predicted was coming.
The other was Jesus. And you may have noticed that his rule would be characterized by something entirely different. He is “gentle,” Zechariah said. In verse 10, God says that he would take away “the chariots … war-horses … and battle bow” from Ephraim and Jerusalem. He would take those weapons away because Jesus wouldn’t use them to advance his kingdom.
In this kingdom of earth, those weapons are often necessary. God, in fact, is the one who gives government (and only the government) the right to use force against both its own citizens and also other nations whose decisions are destroying peace and promoting hostility. But Jesus told Pilate that “My kingdom is not of this world.” And the fact that he chooses not to use force or weapons as he carries out his duties of his kingdom emphasizes three very important things for us.
Firstly, he doesn’t force anyone into his kingdom. If you don’t want to go to heaven, you won’t. He won’t force you in. He will help you along the way, encourage you, comfort you, and guide you. He will even pay the full price of admission. But the one thing he will not do is force you into heaven if you don’t really want to go in. And if he won’t force anyone in, then neither can we. As much as we might like to sometimes, we can’t force our kids, our families, neighbors, or anyone into heaven. We can highlight its beauty. We can show them the Way. But we can’t force them in.
Secondly, he doesn’t force anyone to live like he did on earth. But it means something if we don’t. King Jesus was gentle, patient, and caring. Jesus told his disciples, “This is how the world will know that you are my disciples – if you love one another.” In other words, when our lives are not characterized by love, gentleness, and humility; when we make decisions based entirely on what’s best for me; when we try to affect change in our relationships using the weapons of yelling, shouting, gossiping, holding grudges, or giving someone the silent treatment, then we reveal to the world that something other than the kingdom of Jesus is more important.
And finally, if he’s not going to force any of us to live like him, that means, thirdly, he’s not going to force anyone else to love you like he did. Zechariah tells us that Jesus came to proclaim peace to the nations. But if God doesn’t force anyone to give you the same thing, then you might often find yourself surrounded by people who make you feel something different. Just look at the people Zechariah addresses in our sermon. The people of Jerusalem were discouraged, hurt, and broken because Babylon was not so peace-full toward them.
But Zechariah also mentions Ephraim; and it’s interesting that he does. Like God’s people in Jerusalem, Ephraim had been annihilated by another nation, and their people carried away. But unlike Jerusalem, the people of Ephraim never came back. When Zechariah writes this, they didn’t exist. And they never did again. And that’s important because I bet there are times when you feel as though your life does not exist to anyone; that no one would miss you if you were gone; that you’ve already been forgotten, that your life doesn’t make any kind of real difference in God’s kingdom or isn’t really all that important to anyone. And that can be a hard place to live.
That happened to a woman in Florida recently. On March 27th, Latina Herring called 911 multiple times, telling the authorities that she was in danger from her boyfriend. But she called so many times that they thought she must be joking. At one point during her final call, the person on the phone told Latina to “just stop calling 911 and making accusations that you don’t know about.” Less than three hours later, Latina and her 8-year-old son had been killed by the boyfriend. Life is hard when your life doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.
Even God knows that. Just think of everything Jesus saw as he rode into Jerusalem. Sure, he saw the palm branches and little children. But he also saw every fulfillment of Zechariah’s predictions. He saw himself riding a donkey into Jerusalem. And if he lifted his eyes a bit, he also would have seen the garden where he knew Judas was going to betray him for 30 pieces of silver, the skull-shaped hill where they would pound nails into his skin, the courtyard where the Good Shepherd would be sacrificed like a lamb, the stone pavement where the eternal Judge would be condemned, and the place where our King would be given a crown of thorns that would draw blood out of him. Jesus saw all the places where Zechariah’s prophecies were going to be carried out.
He knew all those things were coming. And the fact that he did not run away from them emphasizes one very important thing. What does the name Zechariah mean? “The Lord remembers.” He remembers you. He knows your pain. He knows your weakness. He knows your sin. He knows the moments in life that make it hard to shout for joy and give thanks to him, and he does not want you to forget what kind of king was coming into Jerusalem. One who came to embrace the pain of being forgotten, by men and by God, if that’s what it took to pay the required cost of forgiving sinners like you and me and putting us into the only kingdom where you will be remembered, loved, and adored every day; where there is no more death, crying, or pain, where every tear is wiped away, and where you will once again see and never have to say goodbye to anyone to love ever again.
You know what that is? That, my friends, is a reason to shout for joy, no matter what else is happening. No matter your loss. No matter your pain. No matter how easily you fall into temptation. You have a reason to get back up on your feet again. All because your King came. He came for you. And nobody forced him to. It really was just the only thing he ever wanted to do.
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